After doctors successfully removed a melanoma from J.P. Rodriguez’s back in 2006, he resumed his life – working, spending time with family and not thinking much about the disease. But in 2008, J.P. began to experience headaches, weakness and even a blackout. Doctors couldn’t figure out the problem until J.P.’s wife mentioned his cancer history during an ER visit. Knowing melanoma can spread, the doctor ordered an MRI. It showed a growth in J.P.’s brain. The news came as a shock to J.P. “I’d never investigated melanoma or given it much thought. When they said there was no cancer in 2006, I just assumed I was done with cancer,” J.P. says. “When 2008 came around, I didn’t put it together that these could be related.” Choosing MD Anderson for brain tumor treatment After that first metastasis, J.P. underwent a craniotomy at a San Antonio, Texas hospital. The procedure was successful, but the recovery was difficult. While he was recovering, one of his doctors told him about MD Anderson. “He told me that his father went to MD Anderson for cancer treatment and did very well,” J.P. recalls. “My wife became very interested. After the recovery period, we started investigating.” Liking what they read, J.P. made an appointment at MD Anderson. Since J.P. just had surgery to remove metastasis, his doctor at MD Anderson, Nicholas Papadopoulos, M.D. (now retired), didn’t have a growth to treat. Papadopoulos suspected that J.P.’s cancer had turned aggressive, though, and had him undergo an MRI every one to two months — far more frequently than normal. Less than a year after J.P.’s initial metastasis, a...

Nearly a decade ago, Maria Newhouse’s father was told that his colorectal cancer had metastasized to his liver and lungs and that he had no more than six months to live. Despite the odds, her dad, who was in his early 80s, had part of his colon removed and prayed for a miracle. “Sure enough, six months later his oncologist told us, ‘I wish I could tell all my patients this, but there’s not a trace of cancer left in him. I have no idea how to explain any of this,’” Maria recalls. Maria’s breast cancer diagnosis Although Maria’s father died of heart failure several years later, his cancer journey gave her comfort when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2016. “I wasn’t going to give up. If there’s any chance, I’m going to take it,” she recalls telling herself. Days earlier, Maria’s family doctor had discovered a lump on her left breast during a routine exam. She underwent a biopsy through MD Anderson Cancer Center Breast Care with Memorial Hermann, a collaboration that allows patients to receive breast imaging and diagnostic services from MD Anderson breast radiologists at certain Memorial Hermann locations around the Houston area. The results showed stage I HER2-positive breast cancer. After meeting with other physicians, Maria sought a second opinion from Makesha Miggins, M.D., and Victor Hassid, M.D., at MD Anderson in Sugar Land, which is only a few miles away from her Missouri City home. “I fell in love with them because I felt they were a team,” she says. “I was so impressed by them that I decided to make...

The idea of chemotherapy terrified Pushpa Damle. She was scared of the side effects. She was scared of feeling weak. She was scared she couldn’t do it. Pushpa had already undergone a successful lung cancer surgery, but doctors at MD Anderson in Sugar Land told her that chemotherapy could ensure that her non-small cell lung cancer didn’t return. “I asked myself, ‘Do you want to give life a shot?’” she says. In the end, her desire to live a long life outweighed her fears. Pushpa agreed to receive chemotherapy. An unexpected non-small cell lung cancer diagnosis As a business owner, Pupsha had just begun to think about retirement before her non-small cell lung cancer diagnosis in November 2011, and she loved spending time with her grandchildren. Aside from cancer, she was healthy. She never suspected that the lingering cough she’d developed just before Thanksgiving would lead to a lung cancer diagnosis. “Cancer was the last thing anyone – including me – would have expected,” Pushpa says. “I had everything to live for.” Chemotherapy for lung cancer treatment Once she agreed to the treatment plan, Pushpa underwent 12 weeks of chemotherapy. Once a week she was administered chemotherapy at MD Anderson in Sugar Land from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. She experienced few side effects during that time, aside from fatigue. “I consider myself lucky to have tolerated it so well,” she says. While she knows that everyone’s chemotherapy experience is different, she was glad to learn that the treatment had improved over the years and wasn’t as bad as she’d expected. Finding hope through myCancerConnection But Pushpa still struggled...

MD Anderson has been a part of Len Turpin’s family for generations. In the 1960s, his paternal great-grandmother was successfully treated here for ovarian cancer, and in the early 1980s, his father was successfully treated here for melanoma. “MD Anderson is an amazing institution,” says Len, who was just 11 when his father was diagnosed. “It really makes a difference in people’s lives.” A melanoma diagnosis Len’s father, Kenneth Turpin, came to MD Anderson in Sept. 1981, after discovering a swollen lymph node under his right arm. He was diagnosed with stage III melanoma by the late Charles M. McBride, M.D. Its source was a birthmark on Kenneth’s right upper arm. Ironically, the mole had been examined regularly and deemed non-cancerous for years. “He’d had that mole all his life and it never gave him any trouble,” Len says. “But right before Dad was diagnosed, it suddenly ‘bleached out.’ Then he found the swollen lymph node, which turned out to be a tumor the size of a large lemon.” An early immunotherapy clinical trial Len’s father had the tumor removed at a hospital near his home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He came to MD Anderson for additional treatment, and had surgery here to remove another 16 lymph nodes on the right side of his body. He also participated in an immunotherapy clinical trial for something called “MER therapy” (or methanol extraction residue of bacillus Calmette-Guerin). Patients are still being treated with a related drug today. “It was a pretty rough experience,” Len adds. “And there was a point when we didn’t know if Dad was going to make it....

When Suzanne Stone completed her first half-marathon in February, the achievement was extra sweet: she’d managed to finish the long-distance race two years after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. Suzanne had been on her usual morning run the week before Thanksgiving 2014 when she started to notice the symptoms: “I felt really, really funny and my words were all garbled,” Suzanne says. A colleague drove her to the ER, where an MRI revealed a brain tumor. “I worried about whether the tumor would be malignant or not,” Suzanne says. “But I was mostly concerned about Thanksgiving dinner because I was having 50 people over.” She hosted a full house for Thanksgiving before going in for surgery at a local hospital on Dec. 2, 2014. After the tumor was removed, Suzanne learned it was glioblastoma, an aggressive, malignant grade IV brain tumor. She began radiation therapy and chemotherapy, near her home in Fort Worth, Texas. Brain tumor treatment at MD Anderson In March 2015, Suzanne talked to her oncologist about a referral to MD Anderson. “We knew MD Anderson had a very good reputation for dealing with glioblastoma, and we wanted all the help we could get,” Suzanne says. Her doctor referred her to neuro-oncologist Marta Penas-Prado, M.D., at MD Anderson’s Brain and Spine Center. Soon, Suzanne started experiencing weakness on the right side of her body, and a scan confirmed the tumor had progressed. Because it was located near the speech areas of her brain, neurosurgeon Jeffrey Weinberg, M.D., recommended an awake craniotomy. In this type of brain surgery, the patient is woken up during the operation to...